Feminism in Community
Feminism in Community
Adult Education for Transformation Feminism in Community
Leona M. English
St. Francis Xavier University, Canada
and
Adult Education for Transformation
Catherine J. Irving
St. Francis Xavier University, Canada Leona M. English and Catherine J. Irving
The authors draw upon their earlier research examining how feminists have negotiated
identity and learning in international contexts or multisector environments. Feminism
in Community focuses on feminist challenges to lead, learn, and participate in
nonprofit organizations, as well as their efforts to enact feminist pedagogy through
arts processes, Internet fora, and critical community engagement. The authors bring
a focused energy to the topic of women and adult learning, integrating insights of
pedagogy and theory-informed practice in the fields of social movement learning,
transformative learning, and community development. The social determinants of
health, spirituality, research partnerships, and policy engagement are among the
contexts in which such learning occurs. In drawing attention to the identity and
practice of the adult educator teaching and learning with women in the community,
the authors respond to gender mainstreaming processes that have obscured women
as a discernible category in many areas of practice.
ISBN 978-94-6300-200-4
SensePublishers ADUL 16
Spine
11.582 mm
Feminism in Community
INTERNATIONAL ISSUES IN ADULT EDUCATION
Volume 16
Series Editor:
Peter Mayo, University of Malta, Msida, Malta
Scope:
This international book series attempts to do justice to adult education as an ever
expanding field. It is intended to be internationally inclusive and attract writers and
readers from different parts of the world. It also attempts to cover many of the areas
that feature prominently in this amorphous field. It is a series that seeks to underline
the global dimensions of adult education, covering a whole range of perspectives. In
this regard, the series seeks to fill in an international void by providing a book series
that complements the many journals, professional and academic, that exist in the
area. The scope would be broad enough to comprise such issues as Adult Education
in specific regional contexts, Adult Education in the Arab world, Participatory
Action Research and Adult Education, Adult Education and Participatory
Citizenship, Adult Education and the World Social Forum, Adult Education
and Disability, Adult Education and the Elderly, Adult Education in Prisons,
Adult Education, Work and Livelihoods, Adult Education and Migration, The
Education of Older Adults, Southern Perspectives on Adult Education, Adult
Education and Progressive Social Movements, Popular Education in Latin America
and Beyond, Eastern European perspectives on Adult Education, An Anti-Racist
Agenda in Adult Education, Postcolonial perspectives on Adult Education, Adult
Education and Indigenous Movements, Adult Education and Small States. There
is also room for single country studies of Adult Education provided that a market for
such a study is guaranteed.
Feminism in Community
Adult Education for Transformation
Acknowledgements ix
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
Chapter 12: Adult Education and the Community: Making the Feminist
Connections 159
References 165
vii
Acknowledgements
ix
FREQUENTLY USED ABBREVIATIONS
xi
Chapter 1
Introduction
All summations have a beginning, all effect has a story, all kindness begins
with the sown seed. Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of light is the
crossroads of indolence, or action. Be ignited, or be gone. (Mary Oliver,
2005, p. 59)
In the spirit of Mary Olivers words, this book is about igniting: igniting learning,
igniting hearts, and igniting citizens to learning and action. Our particular focus is
on adult education for and by feminists in the community; and in writing this book,
we want to share the flame many feminists have for creating change and the world
we want.
Over the past 10 years or more, we have been engaged in critical scholarship
on gender, feminism, and social action, with a particular focus on the nonprofit
and grassroots spheres. In this book, we draw from those writings and studies in
which we collected and analysed data and wrote about feminist adult educators.
Our focus then, as now, is on how feminists have negotiated identity and learning
in international contexts or multisector environments; struggled to lead, learn, and
participate in nonprofit organizations; and enacted a feminist pedagogy through arts
processes, Internet fora, and in the community. Though our varied research projects
had different emphases, they were united in their focus on facilitating, negotiating,
and strengthening womens lifelong learning for change. For us, they had a particular
strength in highlighting the complexities of identity and practice of the feminist adult
educator, and we would like to explore some of that complexity in this book.
Other themes that emerged in this research were the tensions inherent in
discussions of identity formation and flux, spirituality and religion, resistance and
participatory democracy, informal and nonformal learning, social media networking,
indigenous knowing and worldviews from the Global South. These themes are
explored in various chapters throughout this text. The themes, while diverse, are
tied to recurring interwoven issues and contexts. We will make a deliberate effort
not to simplify or conflate the issues but rather we will engage them in the level of
complexity that is appropriate to them. Writing some years ago, feminist theorist
Patti Lather (1996) decried the addiction to accessibility and clarity, a move that she
saw as having a politics of its own; it dumbed down serious and complicated ideas
and robbed them of their robustness. We think Patti Lather had a point.
This book grew out of our observation that there is an increasing gap in the
literature on women and learning, especially from a critical, political and engaged
1
Chapter 1
perspective. These issues still matter, and a book with a deliberative focus on
women, gender, and learning is a way to fill this void. As authors and feminists,
we were formed in second wave feminism with its stress on equality and structural
change, and later informed by the third waves integration of poststructuralism
and diversity. And, as adult educators, we were both influenced by a number of
writers and books in our own field: Womens Ways of Knowing (Belenky, Clinchy,
Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986) as well as the specifically adult learning-focused
book by Elizabeth Hayes, Daniele Flannery, Annie Brooks, Elizabeth Tisdell,
and Jane Hugo, entitled Women as Learners: The Significance of Gender in Adult
Learning (2000). This latter book has been helpful over the years for those of us
who teach in adult education in terms of its reference for pedagogical strategies and
approaches for women and learning as well as its representation of both significant
authors and issues relevant to women doing formal teaching and learning in higher
education. Additionally, there is Jeanie Allen, Diane Dean, and Susan Brackens
(2008) examination of the experience of female students in higher education. Here
in this book we continue those conversations, applying lenses of social science
theories as heuristic devices to better understand how adult learning occurs, what
the contextual factors are, and how power and resistance are implicated in the
adult learning process. We bring a decidedly critical and theoretical perspective to
explore issues of race, class, and gender in an international context.
Some of the work published in the past few decades on feminist adult education
in the community has been formative and has influenced the creation of this text.
In 1996, South Africans Shirley Walters and Linzi Manicom edited the collection
Gender in Popular Education: Methods for Empowerment, which brings to the fore
many feminist-informed methodologies for doing popular education in community
contexts around the world. Recurring themes and analysesgender and race,
globalization, and development practicewere updated and reframed in their 2012
edition (Manicom & Walters). Contributing authors in that 2012 collection explore
popular education practice in diverse spaces such as theatre, prisons and online,
and integrate current thinking on colonialism and political repression. Also, Angela
Miles (2013) edited collection, Women in a Globalizing World, provides solid
sociological analyses of many complex development issues for women, and like
Manicom and Walters, highlights the diversity of the spaces claimed by women to
promote learning and action. While Allen et al. (2008) are strong on educational
processes and institutions, Miles (2013) authors put considerable emphasis on
womens engagement with community development. Similarly, the various articles
in Nancy Tabers (2015) special issue of the Canadian Journal for the Study of
Adult Education, have a strong emphasis on feminism and the community. What
these publications have in common is a continued interest in how womens ideas
and practices are intricately connected and how they work toward collective change.
Feminist theorizing has also contributed greatly to our understanding of womens
learning and activism within the larger international development sphere, and
the role of public policy. Two major eventsthe International Womens Year
2
Introduction
in 1975 and the subsequent Decade for Women culminating in the Third World
Conference on Women in Nairobi, Kenyaenabled feminist theorists, researchers,
and practitioners from the Global South to play a role in policy discussions. The
1970s1980s were significant decades when activists were raising awareness about
the implications of ignoring womens lives or making assumptions about womens
contributions to economies and societies. Women in Development (WID) became
the catchphrase to ensure women were not forgotten in policy decisions and
program plans. Different camps debated on the best ways for integrating womens
participation in the development discourse, and critics contended that the prevalent
top-down approaches being offered did little to change the system that was inherently
discriminatory. The term Gender and Development (GAD) describes the next stage
of the process to increase womens involvement. Key contributions of GAD were
its focus on (a) research to gather details about womens participation, and (b)
gender training activities at varying levels, from international agencies to grassroots
organizations. The implementation of training, research, and programs to integrate
women into development helped build womens organizations to increase learning
and participation activities to connect the grassroots with international policies.
Organizations such as Development Alternatives for a New Era (DAWN)
arose, and today continue to represent women from many countries to identify
how development initiatives addressed or ignored womens work and lives (Sen
& Grown, 1987; Sen & Durano, 2014). Their critical work shatters the old myth
that feminism is nothing more than an agenda of Western countries. Researchers at
the University of Sussex and its Institute for Development Studies in England have
written extensively on gender and international development through a decidedly
feminist lens. Their theoretical contributions are helpful for adult educators who
are bridging local and international issues in development practice and community
learning. For example, the work of Andrea Cornwall, Elizabeth Harrison, and Ann
Whiteheads Feminisms in Development (2007), as well as their Gender Myths and
Feminist Fables (2008), address contradictions and challenges in development (see
also Cornwall & Edwards, 2014). The various conversations in these collections
inform our discussion of education, pedagogy, and learning in settings as varied
as community, international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), and higher
education and the state.
These examples of feminist writing aside, the early 21st century has been
challenging for those pursuing a continued interest in women and adult education
across the spectrum. Sociologist Margrit Eichler, Patrizia Albanese, Susan Ferguson,
Nicky Hyndman, Lichun Willa Liu, and Ann Matthews (2010) point out that adult
education has not had a strong emphasis on women and learning, and we certainly
have noted the waning of womens voices and concerns. Eichler (2005) herself
sought to correct the androcentric bias of the field by examining womens housework
as a site of informal learning. Concerned by the fact that corporate concerns are
guiding adult education, she countered with her own studies on the value of learning
housework and called for even more attention to the everyday nature of womens
3
Chapter 1
learning. Eichlers (2005) particular concern with housework came from her
sociological observation that housework undergirds and indeed makes the market
economy possible.
Our book is somewhere between the approaches examining educational processes
and those highlighting community engagement. We bring a focused energy to the
topic of women and adult learning within the community and, though we build on
work of theorists in feminist community development, we make an explicit attempt
to integrate the insights of pedagogy and theory-informed practice. Drawing on local
and global examples, we are interested in exploring the adult learning and teaching
theories and practices that make development possible. We continue these popular
education conversations and bring a strong adult education focus built on theory,
practice, activism, and community, highlighting teaching practices and contexts
where adult educators themselves learn informally and nonformally. Current issues
such as social media, the insights of poststructuralism and postcolonialism, and
work on organizational structures and processes are also given attention.
Most of all, we want to draw attention to the identity and practice of the adult
educator teaching and learning with women as a distinct category and group. A
particular concern is the focused attention to gender mainstreaming in the past
20 years or so that obscures women as a discernable category in many arenas of
practice. We are not alone in making this observation. Jenevieve Mannell (2012)
pointed out that after Beijing World Conference in 1995, there was a deliberate effort
to mainstream womens issues (and not separate them out), which often led to the
inclusion of women becoming little more than a technical taskone more box on a
checklist to be filled in to show that one was diverse and inclusive. Rosalind Eyben
(2014) describes the continued tension between working within existing paradigms
or changing them (p. 160), which sounds a lot like the criticisms of a few decades
ago done to make issues identified as gendered fit into the existing system, rather
than addressing the inherent inequalities.
This mainstreaming, though well-reasoned normalizing process, sometimes
resulted in the undermining of the hard work of studying the persistence of gender
disparities and of developing strategies to effect change. This normalizing process
has also obscured the distinct contributions of feminist educators and practitioners.
In adult education, we have similarly subsumed the category of womens learning
and the goals of feminist pedagogy into depoliticized good teaching. There has been
a glut of books and studies on interdisciplinary approaches such critical and cultural
studies and global studies, which presume inclusion of women. We are neither post-
womens learning nor post-feminist learning, as there is much to be done and we are
definitely not post or past the issues. Uncritical inclusivity runs the risk of papering
over differences rather than addressing them.
Such misconceptions, additionally, create challenges for working on the ground to
overcome oppression. Joyce Green (2007) notes the arguments of those writers who
dismiss feminism as representing the worldviews of colonizers. Greens collection
demonstrates, in contrast, examples of how Aboriginal feminism brings together
4
Introduction
5
Chapter 1
problematic for some younger women. Professor Susan Bracken (2008) sees this
often in teaching young women in adult education programs. Unlike Womens
Studies students, whom she also teaches, women in adult education classes are
sometimes loathe to see feminism as relevant to their context or their situations.
Womens advances in the 20th century aside, the term feminism is still plagued by
stereotypes of divisiveness and radical action that make some wary. There is a range
of feminist perspectives, that respond to time and location, running the gamut from
advocating for pay equity right along to radical forms agitating for fundamental
societal shifts, yet all hold a political intent of change.
A contributing factor to the backlash against feminism and to a certain reticence
in using the term is the mistaken belief that women have already attained equality.
Western media is preoccupied with portraying women through self-focused practices
such as yoga, relaxation, and self-reflexivity (sans the critical) and as having
reached the top rung of corporations. Our Western popular press is so besieged by
discussions of women attaining Fortune 500 status while struggling to balance work
and family life that one can be forgiven for thinking that it is 1950 and not the
21st century. The danger of such thinking, of course, is that it is nostalgia without
memory (p. 30) to use anthropologist Arjun Appadurais (1996) phrase for one of
the cultural dimensions of globalization. We forget that we are global citizens and
that our struggles are not over; indeed, we can also forget that there was a struggle
and that it was hard fought. Western privileging of the self hides the collective
intent of feminism to rout out discrimination in its many forms, whether or not we,
as individuals, experience them a daily basis.
In her brief primer, Feminism is for Everybody, bell hooks (2000) notes that
ever since she became a feminist she had wanted to write a little book that would
explain clearly what feminism is and why it matters, why it still matters. She calls
for more continuing feminist education for the survival of the movement. This rings
true for people in other movements who connect the slippage of education to the
decline of their movement. It is no wonder that we are seeing the return of feminist
battles from the 1950s1980s that were confronted and won. Gendered stereotypes
that were once thought to have been debunked are re-emerging in many spheres
ranging from childrens toys to popular psychology. Gina Ribbon calls the practice
of characterizing certain abilities to female or male brains as neo-phrenology that
impose gender stereotypes rather than explore the elasticity of human thought and
behaviour (cited in Healy, 2014).
In many ways, feminist conversationsin the West, at leasthave turned inward
and not outward. When Stephanie Coontz (2011) published her retrospective on
Betty Friedans (1963) The Feminine Mystique, she noted that women readers of the
now-famous book, often seen as a touchstone in the Western feminist movement,
saw it as a liberating force in their lives, pushing them to self-fulfillment and
awakening. Some 50 years later, Coontz is critical in her commentary, arguing
that Friedans version of feminism was less radical and more personal than it has
been purported to be. Coontzs critique of the focus on the self-echoes Barbara
6
Introduction
7
Chapter 1
As we think of the global questions around education and learning for women, we
must think of the places where most of this learning occurs, especially for women.
The questions for adult educators here are drawn from the foundational work of
Griff Foley (1999) who used them as a tool for understanding the dimensions of
radical adult education. Though Foley was not writing specifically about women,
some of his questions are useful in guiding our examination of learning and teaching
for and by women, in contexts such as community based organizations, nonprofits,
higher education, the home, the public sphereindeed, in any place that learning
occurs. He asks:
What forms do education and learning take? What are the crucial features of the
political and economic context? How do these shape education and learning?
What are the micro-politics of the situation, the places in which adults live
and work? What are the ideological and discursive practices and struggles, of
social movement actors and their opponents? To what extent do these practices
and struggles facilitate or hinder emancipatory learning and action? What
does all this mean for political education? What interventions are possible and
helpful? (Foley, p. 10)
Foleys (1999) questions keep us focused on learning, the core element of effective
development, even if it has not always been recognized. We also must look at the
importance of sustained learning in social movementssuccessful social action does
not mean the learning can stop. Classic adult education and development initiatives
such as the Antigonish Movement highlight the primary role of continuous education
and learning. In writing about the Movement, economists Santo Dodaro and Leonard
Pluta (2012) emphasise that from the early days in the 1930s, study clubs were
the local mobilizer for reading and discussing ideas and became a cornerstone of
planning for action through member-owned forms of organizing. Adult education
was always at the centre of the Movements Big Picture or plan for development.
They note that problems arose when, as economic organizations formed as a result of
the study club activities, a sustained interest in education began to wane. When the
co-operative movement neglected ongoing educational efforts, people began to lose
a connection to the underlying philosophies of co-operative principles providing
a peoples alternative to corporate power. This disconnection, in turn, weakened
the commitment to this alternative economic form, and contributed to the failure
of the co-operatives that had been created. When citizens do not see co-operatives
as distinct from other economic models, nor see their own roles and responsibilities
in the life of the co-operative, the sole focus is reduced to the bottom line, with
other priorities and players lost in the shuffle. This dynamic plays itself out again
and again in various realms, including feminism. Progress is undermined when our
social justice roots are forgotten or ignored. As adult educators involved in many of
these issues, we want to keep learning front and centre.
Much of womens learning is done collectively and often informally. As bell
hooks (2000) recalls that feminist consciousness grew through women learning in
8
Introduction
groups before there were formal womens studies programs. The growth of feminist
research and study in the academic context provided theory and analysis that
furthered womens understanding of conditions they already knew and experienced
at very personal levelsexperiences which they came to understand to be felt by
women on a larger scale. Notably, hooks emphasises the importance of continuing
feminist education for the survival of the movement. This rings true to people in
other movements who can identify the slipping of education to the decline of their
movement, as is the case with trade unions or with the co-operative movement as
noted above. Such education must span all sectors of society including the community
level, and must take on a variety of forms including expression through popular
performance such as music. hooks is adamant that education was and is an integral
part of sustaining feminism: Most people have no understanding of the myriad
ways feminism has positively changed all our lives. Sharing feminist thought and
practice sustains feminist movement. Feminist knowledge is for everybody (p. 24).
The issues are clear and the need for continued engagement with feminist and
adult learning is equally clear. Following this introduction, in Chapter 2 we focus
directly on leading and learning in feminist organizations in the community, the
primary location or context for adult education. In these organizations, the links
among and between feminism, learning, and the community are being negotiated
constantly. Though they are often glossed over in related discussions of development
and community empowerment, we see them as integral to discussions of feminists
and learning. In Chapter 3, the community is addressed as a site of informal and
nonformal learning about the social, cultural and economic determinants of health.
We invite readers in Chapter 4 into a conversation about how to use the arts and
creativity to foster learning about crucial issues. In Chapter 5, we concentrate on
social movement learning as a way for feminists to work with other social movements
to effect change, including the ways ICTs are used for learning and activism. In
Chapter 6 we highlight the complexity of change in light of religious and spiritual
difference and dialogue. In Chapter 7 we examine the ways in which feminists in the
community negotiate and learn from community research partnerships that contribute
to new knowledge and insight. Chapter 8 contains an overview of feminist pedagogy,
and in Chapter 9 we explore fundamental social transformation. In Chapter 10, we
delve into the all-important issue of power and resistance in informal learning, and
Chapter 11 we review international policies and practices on feminism and adult
education. The book closes with Chapter 12, which contains our critical appraisal of
the foregoing conversations as well as insights for practice and research.
All through this book, our critical commitment is to the educator who works in
the community to foster adult learning and activism and to negotiate creative ways
of leading and working in organizations for change. We have drawn on our own
experiences and past work in weaving the different strands of experience, theory,
and issues. As we developed the book, we came to see that some issues such as the
place of the body in womens learning might have deserved their own chapter. The
body is a particularly feminist focus of inquiry through the physicality of emotion,
9
Chapter 1
health, embodied learning, and artistic expression and in the tension of physical or
virtual presence online; yet, because of space constraints, we decided to weave this
discussion throughout the existing chapters.
A final note about style. We chose to privilege womens names and identities
in our text. Following the insights of Valerie-Lee Chapman (2003) and Susan
Tescione (1998), as much as possible we refer to female (and many male) writers
by their full names, which standard social science styles such as APA do not. This
text politicizes further the place of women in society and serves as a resistance to
a predominantly male-by-default worldview by making visible the many female
writers and contributors to our thinking.
10
Chapter 2
Feminist Organizations
Leading and Learning
11
Chapter 2
importance of 4 decades of movements shows that they are the single-most effective
factor (not governments, economic prosperity, documents, or INGOs) influencing
change, especially with regard to VAW.
Centres of Learning
Feminist organizations such as the Red Thread, through purpose and necessity, have
always been centres of learning. The suffragists of feminisms first wave raised
womens awareness of democratic participation. Consciousness raising groups
of the 1960s and 1970s supported women to start with their lived experiences to
uncover the causes of the inequalities they faced. Beyond the topics discussed in
these collectives, the organizational forms that emerged became increasingly more
politically oriented. Feminists reinvented the organizational structures and practices
that they saw as inherently patriarchal and hierarchal, the very antithesis of feminist
collectivist action. Collective frames working towards consensus became essential
to living out feminist principles in organizational form. Yet, it is not always clear
how leaders emerged in these organizations or how they were sustained in their
positions. The forms of leadership were as varied as the organizational structure.
Feminist nonprofit or civil society organizations share much in common with all
community-based organizations in that they have a list of tasks or a mandate that is
specific to each entity. Irish community development researcher Andrew ORegan
(as cited in Donnelly-Cox, Donoghue, & Hayes, 2001) names these common
organizational tasks as:
Delivering services, often in partnership with the state
Identifying and addressing new social needs
Maintaining and changing the values system in society
Mediating between the individual and the state
Providing a forum for the social construction of the individual. (p. 197)
ORegan notes in the original work that these five tasks are interrelated functions
as most organizations and leaders wear multiple hats and perform many tasks on a
daily basis. All of these five functions may or may not be present in one group, as
each organization, given its mandate and constituency, emphasises different aspects
or roles. Depending upon its size and scope, an organization may be able to work
at multiple tasks with multiple partners, or may be preoccupied with the delivery
of services and lack the capacity to expand beyond that. Yet, as we will explore
further in Chapter 11, there is a push and pull from the grassroots through to political
and bureaucratic levels. It is noteworthy that adult education of members and the
community is a hidden value in each of these named tasks. To supplement ORegans
list, feminist organizations have additional roles, the first of which is related to their
12
Feminist Organizations
raison detre, to be a political actor on behalf of women in the public sphere. As well,
feminist organizations are engaged in a constant process of formal, nonformal, or
informal learning, either through deliberate teaching of classes or through the active
engagement of women in learning politics and policies. Their learning and teaching
agenda, implied or articulated, may include the learning that occurs when doing
the jobs of an organization, whether it be managing personnel issues, bookkeeping,
communicating, negotiating difference, budgeting, or fundraising.
At the community level, feminist organizations range from womens resource or
drop-in centres, anti-violence agencies, transition houses for victims of violence,
to agencies providing women-specific health, counseling, or training services
(see English, 2011). Often, these organizations are intersectoral and they address
disability, immigration, poverty, and race, since the reality is that most socio-political-
cultural issues are multifaceted. The people in these agencies observe the common
causes of the myriad symptoms they deal with on a daily basis. An awareness of the
interconnected sources and products of oppression often leads organizations to take
a similarly intersectoral approach to match their services to the issues. We follow
Kimberle Crenshaw (1991, 2010), Audre Lorde (1984), bell hooks (2001), and many
others in acknowledging the convergence of multiple issues in feminist work. Women
in grassroots centres themselves have long recognized and dealt with these multiple
issues and partners, especially with the need for education around key concerns.
As a particular kind of community organization, feminist NGOs pay special
attention to the external inequalities women encounterviolence, poverty, literacy,
childcaresometimes to the detriment of internal relationships and to their members
learning and organizing, which admittedly are thorny, but vitally important, issues.
A tension thwarting the more inner/reflexive process has been the wariness to reveal
inside weaknesses when faced with perpetual concerns over funding and anti-
feminist backlash policies or activities (English, 2005a). Womens organizations, as
a result, often struggle alone with their organizational challenges.
Of course, not every feminist organization operates in the same way since each
is situated differently and has its own mandate. Yeheskel Hasenfeld and Benjamin
Gidron (2005), for instance, observe that third-sector or community organizations
are typically viewed from one of three vantage points, and theoretical and research
traditions. They may be seen as one of civil society, social movement, and
nonprofit sector organizations. In this context civil society is rather narrowly
defined to represent the voluntary sector. The authors add that such distinctions are
often not clear cut in reality, and offer a description of hybridity that reflects the
actual work of those dealing with inequality. The first focus, civil society, is on
autonomous volunteer-run associations characterized by citizen participation and
horizontal network relations (e.g., social clubs, mutual aid associations). The second
refers to social movement organizations such as Greenpeace or AWID, which use
political strategies and actions. The third, nonprofit sector organizations, are formally
organized and granted charitable status. According to Hasenfeld and Gidron, this
isolation of research traditions and the clear-cut distinctions that can be made among
13
Chapter 2
them escapes the fact that there are indeed many hybrid organizations that reflect the
evolution of social action, such as protest groups forming organizations, or charities
that engage in research to engage in policy change. Many feminist organizations,
especially those that are locally based and established to meet myriad community
needs, are hybrid organizations that include all three traditions. The advantage of
applying Hasenfelds and Gidrons multiple lenses to feminist organizations is that
they help to articulate their unique nature as both addressing needs and having a
social movement agenda. In embodying a philosophy and politics of feminism,
feminist organizations are forced to move beyond nonprofit goals of care and service
and toward social transformation. This cross-sector understanding captures the
multiple purposes of feminist nonprofits.
To lead a feminist organization, to manage the dual tensions inherent in dealing with
the state and in building an organizational structure that reflects feminist values, is
a contradiction, especially in Western culture where traditional hierarchical ways
of leading are the norm. Organizations such as Red Thread in Guyana are meant to
be collective and to work as an organic unit. The paradox is rooted in the constant
tension that exists between collectivist and bureaucratic aspects of leadership, a
theory that was well developed by Joyce Rothschild-Whitt in her classic 1979 article
on womens and feminist organizations that were negotiating the tensions from
ideals of the original organizations in the 1960s and 1970s. One of her insights is that
an organization often morphs from a free flow event into a more structured entity
by the very fact of maturing, strengthening, and growing. This bureaucratization
happens with an increase in members and the need to be more structured in order
to lobby agencies and governments, organize for action, and collaborate with other
organizations. It would be difficult to apply for a government grant, in Canada at
least, without indicating an executive director, assistant director, and treasurer, and
showing a strong framework and slate of officials.
Yet, dynamic and charismatic leadership is often the driving force behind
successful feminist organizations. Running a nonprofit organization like a womens
centre or shelter draws upon incredible fortitude and political savvy of the individuals
involved, not only in terms of managerial skills but also in terms of negotiating
with the various external partners and with the internal members, not to mention
the broader advocacy and policy work required to overcome gender discrimination
in its many forms. Alejandra Scampini (2003), for instance, notes that feminist and
education issues were prominent at CONFINTEA V largely because of coordinated
efforts of womens organizations at that conference. Similarly, feminist issues
receive attention at various levels of government because of coordinated action. The
creativity and agility required to work in a neoliberal climate of perpetual scarcity
and ever-increasing bureaucracies involves intense but often unrecognized learning
on the part of many feminists. If leaders of feminist organizations say they are open
14
Feminist Organizations
to change and to ideas, they actually need to model this in the workplace by exploring
ideas and working collectively to frame and reframe them.
The promotion of circles, egalitarian governance structures, and consensus decision
making bears witness to feminist commitments to voice and to experimentation
with structure. However, these strategies can create their own issues, especially if
they do not align with how the organization is really operating. The discourse of
horizontalism (p. 13), as discussed by Gerbaudo (2012), is reflective of the language
of consensus and flat decision making to which many feminist organizations aspire.
Yet, by virtue of size, complexity, and funding mechanisms, many organizations
have difficulty in practising in ways other than hierarchy. In some cases, there is a
false perception that all members are equal and have equal say in all matters, large
and small. There is a point at which feminist leaders need to be honest about circles
and structure and operate in concert with our reality. This honesty and malleability
neither diminishes authenticity nor the future of the feminist movement.
Feminist organizations, especially those that are nonprofit, may be viewed in the
public as bleeding hearts adverse to profits, inherently weak, and less efficient than
their competitive counterparts in the for-profit world. Or, if they serve a publicly-
funded role of providing services, they may be seen as a misuse or waste of taxpayers
money, labelled as special interest groups with the attendant insinuations that they
do not serve the public good and are creating duplicate programs available more
economically elsewhere. Even researchers have tended to look less at nonprofit
organizations as they are usually outside the for-profit realm and are less likely
to attract research funds. Yet, in any of these feminist organizations, the same
leadership, education, and managerial skills need to be learned and practised to
make them viable. In fact, the history of feminist organizations shows they can be
very effective, incredibly well run on shoestring budgets, leading changes that later
become commonplace or taken for granted. Grassroots training, office and financial
management, policy work, public education, and advocacy are all skills that, for the
most part, were learned hands-on at these many community sites of social change.
Although we can quibble that training is not a valid adult education function,
Holst (2002) has shown that skills training is a time-honoured tradition in social
movements. Adult educators have a proud history of training members in activist
skills and practicesindeed, it is a strength of our field.
Some of these activism skills evolved through more formal programs or activities
that attracted womens participation, where the seeds of collective organizing
were planted. The classic adult education examples include the largely female
Chautauqua in New York State, which started as a training centre for Sunday school
teachers in the late 1800s and became an important alternative education program
for women who could not afford the more traditional route of attending college.
Simultaneously a school and organization, Chautauqua became the central starting
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Chapter 2
point for subsequent temperance and violence prevention programs (Kilde, 1999).
Notable among the attendees were suffragette Susan B. Anthony and Jane Addams,
founder of the Chicago settlement community for immigrants, Hull House (Addams,
1910/1912). Chautauqua served as an inviting place for women as it allowed them
to speak to men and women and to cross traditional boundaries of separate sphere
thinking. An incubator for womens causes and concerns over its extensive history,
Chautauqua continues today, though in a more traditional liberal arts mode.
For feminists, much of their skill development in nonprofits involves organizational
management, political organizing, community development, governance, and
communication, some of the same skills that Chautauqua helped to build with women.
Although skills training is largely defined as employment training, nonprofit work at
the community level can be seen as requiring no skills or no particular educational
preparation. Yet, there are many acquired skills that can be learned, including
governance procedures and policies that are integral to organizational life. Effective
organizational leaders in the for-profit or nonprofit worlds learn these skills through
experience, though the learning process is often not visible. Over time, organizations
naturally become more structured and institutionalized, in part because funders demand
it of them and in part because they need to get things done, making it essential to have
executive directors, boards, bylaws, minutes, accounts and audits, not to mention tax
returns, bank accounts, and standardized operations and procedures.
Yet, the tools and rules come with cautions. Audre Lorde (1984) reminds us that
using the masters tools is not enough to change how things are. What does it mean
when the tools of a racist patriarchy are used to examine the fruits of that same
patriarchy? It means that only the most narrow parameters of change are possible
and allowable (pp. 110111). Lorde speaks of tokenism, of adding on different
perspectives in order to check off the required boxes, and she cautions that tokenism
does not tear down the walls but it might just replicate the models of oppressions and
cause more problems. Simply replacing men with women in positions of authority,
for instance, will not alone remove discrimination. A more meaningful dialectic, as
Lorde says, is needed. That said, it is still important to know what tools are used by
the masters, to learn their skills and abilities, but also to keep pushing the boundaries,
finding other tools, in order to dismantle patriarchy.
While feminist organizations operating in a multi-stakeholder environment are
compelled to take on bureaucratic requirements, they need to do so with critical
awareness. Feminist leadership programs that draw uncritically on the tricks of
the trade of the mainstream business schools and overlook the strength of finding
different ways to lead, manage, and collaborate will not achieve the change desired
in any substantive way. Patti ONeill (ONeill & Eyben, 2013), who has worked as
a gender advisor in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD), has come up with her own twist on Lordes masters tools when she
considers the work of feminists within bureaucracy working for transformation: I
think you can use the masters tools to renovate the masters house (p. 89, emphasis
hers). She warns that it is not an easy process and the tools must be handled deftly,
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17
Chapter 2
womens movement became organizations like DAWN and AWID. In some cases,
the institutionalisation is quasi-government or funded by governments. Some
organizations, such as Greenpeace for example, exist outside nation state support,
cautious as they are to avoid the strings that inevitably come with such alliances.
In this complex funding climate, especially in social democratic contexts, as
we will discuss below, it is no wonder that it can be difficult to articulate what
women should learn to be effective leaders, how this learning might occurs, and
who might participate in the intricate process of creating new visions of leadership
that more accurately support the social justice goals of feminist organizations.
Srilatha Batliwala (2011) reminds us that feminist leadership is inherently tied to
the values and practices of the feminist movement, and that it ought to push back
against neoliberal frames of so-called inclusion based on reinforcing sexist gender
roles. This is not a one-size-fits-all approach to leadership development. Those
interested in promoting feminist leadership through education must understand the
ways in which their practice is informed by feminist theory and the history of the
womens movement. The skills to be learned relate more to deepening analysis and
reflexivity than to the confidence-bolstering coaching strategies and self-help guides
popularized by management gurus that populate the shelves of bookstores.
Batliwala (2011) notes the issue of leadership has always been discussed and
debated at the grassroots, though these analyses have been underrepresented in
mainstream academic literature. Evidence of this evolution, where it exists, resides
in the reports, minutes, and other documentation from womens organizations,
which are now held in various archives or the personal papers of lifelong feminist
organizers. Batliwala traces some variances in emphasis or process between
Western feminist organizations and those of the South, but most share a developing
understanding and critique of power.
Given the focus on power, the central forum for learning for feminists in
community-based organizations has been through active hands-on engagement
in organizing and activism. This informal learning can happen in the everyday
and can be influenced in a variety of ways for women, including in an embodied
waylearning through the body and actions on and through the body. As Tracey
Ollis (2012) details in her work, an embodied pedagogy can work through the
activists body and, by extension, through any feminist body. It can also happen
through emotions and relationships, which are very important for women and
learning. Important here are the facilitators and barriers to this learning. These
barriers may be constituted of resistances that arisethe resistances, tensions,
and everyday disruptions that constitute human interaction, and these resistances
may arise as nodules or points of power. To every capillary of power, there is a
resistance (Foucault, 1980).
Indeed, the key to the success of many feminist organizations, such as Red Thread
in Guyana, is the broader learning, awareness raising, and critiquing made possible
among the community women. Their learning is hard to quantifyor, to use the
language of adult education and training, prior learning assessment and recognition
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19
Chapter 2
and furthered this movement, attracting young people into this aboriginal concern
for housing, adequate living conditions, and safety.
Idle No More began as a response to changes in legislation brought forward
by the Canadian government, but evolved to become attached to a wide range of
concerns such as Indigenous land claims and resource extraction. It is a movement
with a strong female leadership presence, even if that presence is not always obvious
to the public; the Idle No More (2012) website has recognized the four women who
initiated the protests that grew to become this ongoing campaign. Idle No More was
not a singular action. Leaders have emerged who are now working to strengthen
education and learning about First Nations issues and how to agitate for change.
Much like the citizenship schools and other training done within the American
civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, with the help of the Highlander Folk
School in Tennessee, there is an initiative to have teach-ins and summer sovereignty
schools to help strengthen the knowledge of their core activists. The Idle No More
website also provides a space for other action groups, such as those demanding
action to address violence against indigenous women.
Media portrayals of actions such as Idle No More can sometimes have a
tendency to celebrate the large scale activism and learning that women engage in
and to diminish the everyday heroism of women whose activism within a variety
of organizations has been sustained over time. As we often see, once the media
spotlight dims, it may be assumed that the activism has also dimmed. This hides
the reality that sustained activism involves long stretches of quiet, behind-the-
scenes organizing. For example, Canadian and Australian scholar Elizabeth Burge
(2011) has profiled the lives of 27 women activists in Atlantic Canada, telling
their stories and highlighting the ups and downs of their campaigns for change.
One of the observations to be made on these profiles is that the women learned
much over a lifetime of facilitating change and mounting resistance, often working
quietly and persistently, often through faith-based, craft, and otherwise benign
organizations that nurtured very political goals. This is in contradistinction to the
resistance that comes to mind for most international activism which is usually
very visible, very public, and very loud in terms of protest. The women in Burges
(2011) study were engaged in long term change projects and were less likely to
be involved in heroic change; we might term this a post-heroic and post-activist
position (see Fletcher, 2003). They went about their work in low profile ways
by building consensus and through nurturing community, rather than seeking the
limelight or staging mass protests. They exercised this form of leadership in their
towns, small groups, and organizations; furthermore, the activism is collaborative
and in some cases, not related to an actual organization. Yet, it is sustained over
time. Burge (2011) profiled promoters of French Acadian rights, leaders within
political parties, and champions of trade unions. The learning and the activism has
been adapted to the scale, intensity of the local environment. Their learning has
partly been about patience, collaboration, and the long haul.
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21
Chapter 2
knowledge (Choudry & Kapoor, 2010). Womens centres have historically played
a key role in this important documentation work, a role that is a challenge to
maintain. Community educators know that a focus on action, and a collective
history of activism, that involves co-learning and co-knowledge is needed: if
local people are engaged in using their own knowledge then they can develop a
capacity for self-determination (Tett, 2010, p. 51), as well as claim the political
space for conversation and activism.
One question is whether these spaces can also exist in the same robust and vibrant
way online, in chatrooms, forums, or online activist sites like GuerrillaGirlsBroadband
(see http://www.ggbb.org/), which fights sexism and racism in the art world.
This is an offshoot of the Guerrilla Girls who, since the 1980s, have used street
performance, graffiti and posters to ridicule museums and galleries who ignore
womens contributions to the arts. The evidence of this group shows that a great
deal of organization can happen in a wired world to combat these issues, as we will
explore further in Chapter 5.
Arguably, a movement would die out without attachment to an organization that
has a focused understanding and mandate for change, and the capacity to see it
through. Witness the rapid rise and fade of the Occupy Movement, which for a short
time captured widespread media attention as protestors drew attention to the most
privileged 1% of the population (Young, 2012) Occupiers reluctance to formalize as
an organization or to align themselves with political parties stands in sharp contrast
with the Tea Party in the US, which emerged as a conservative protest group in 2009
and has grown to work with and influence the Republican Party They remain vigilant
in their scrutiny of Republican politicians who drift left of their brand of social and
fiscal conservatism (Skocpol & Williamson, 2012). This relationship of an idea to
a party is, of course, often problematic, but the Tea Party has gathered momentum,
gained adherents and continued to thrive with its linkage to the Republicans, as their
most viable option to influence public policy.
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Funding
23
Chapter 2
Another topic in feminism is the debate over what actually works in these nonprofit
feminist organizations and how the usual model can indeed support the prevailing
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Feminist Organizations
25
Chapter 2
The ideal collective organization rarely exists. More often we have a hybrid
mixture of forms in which governance is shared, and is, at times, hierarchical. The
ideal is impractical and worse yet, unfundable, as many feminist organizations have
come to acknowledge. In addition, these organizations are intended to be lifelong
learning organizations that support the goals of feminism and encourage learning
about feminism, its history, its intents, the way in which it has evolved, and its
relevance. As Batliwala (2011) sums it up, feminist leadership is about advancing
social change and is not an end in itself; leaders are not created just to be leaders
of any generic institution. They are to engage in social actions to overcome gender
discrimination. Feminist leaders, with their experiences and analysis, are in key
positions to effect changes that other forms of leaders do not (see Batliwala, 2011,
p. 13).
At a certain point, a feminist has to make a choice about whether to achieve policy
and political change from inside or from outside the system. Those who work
within large organizations (e.g., donors, government, INGOs) may call themselves
femocrats in reference to their positioning within a bureaucratic structure (Manuh,
Anyidoho, & Pobee-Hayford, 2013). In many cases, they have experience in a
grassroots organization or in the nonprofit sector, so they would likely be familiar
with the working of these smaller organizations. Whereas the community-based
organizers can indeed work with, network with, and identify allies on the inside,
it is the femocrat who helps them, who is sympathetic to the cause, and who
knows the ways and means of achieving change. Femocrats, for their part, may be
seeking legitimacy and possibly meaning-making by directly contributing to work
on the ground. A femocrat can be a valuable ally in identifying shorter routes to
funding, other allies in the system, and resource people. Although the discourses and
operational procedures within large bureaucratic structure may be hard to navigate,
an insider can make that happen.
Takyiwaa Manuh et al. (2013) observe that a disjuncture can occur when a
femocrat tries to mainstream gender ideas and feminist notions within a bureaucracy.
If the technocrats do not have a strong grounding in potentially transformative
discourses and strategies (p. 45) that are common to civil society, then there can be
conflict and the ideas and processes may never be fully understood or followed in
the organizations. Manuh et al. are clear that the knowledge alone is not sufficient;
one has to understand and imbibe the ideology and accompanying politics. Feminist
ideas and human rights may be approved in principle but neglected in action as
a result. When the state is involved, misunderstandings and lack of analysis can
become more pronounced in that government departments and ministers may
have competing notions and priorities for promoting womens empowerment. In
a federal Department of Labour, for instance, a notion of womens empowerment
might be oriented to jobs, training, and microfinance to support entrepreneurship.
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Feminist Organizations
Policy Work
One of the key roles for an NGOespecially one that operates at the global level
is to work toward policy development and to contribute to international dialogues
on rights, actions, and capacities. Often, organizations including the UN agencies,
state aid agencies, and INGOs have internal gender experts who do training, policy
analysis, and organizational change work specifically focused on gender (Prgl,
2013). This is important work, as we recognize the role of these large agencies
in global policy development. In describing some of the training manuals that
gender experts have developed, Elisabeth Prgl notes that in institutionalizing or
normalizing gender expertise the possibility exists that they lose some criticality and
ability to challenge systems of oppression. That said, gender policy experts serve
a valuable role in dedicating time to the integration of gender agenda, including
an increase in attention to women and peace at the United Nations. Through major
conferences such as the 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing, they have
been able to demand inclusion in global justice. Yet, for every advance, feminist
goals appear to be thwarted elsewhere, as we discuss further in Chapter 11. As well,
women continue to be under represented at the UN. Yet, those feminists who work
within these INGOs as gender experts, members, and leaders still push the feminist
policy agenda forward.
Given the challenges of feminist organizations and movements, the question of long-
term viability remains. We look around and ask, Whither a womens movement?
The challenges come from many quarters: the ongoing anti-feminist backlash that
invokes a culture of self-censorship to deflect criticism, the blending of womens
issues into diversity studies, the use of ambiguous or often meaningless terms
such as inclusion, or the further dissolution of feminism due to in-fighting and
the alliance with more high profile and fundable issues such as the environment
or health promotion. The discourse of collectivity and integrative feminisms that
Angela Miles (1996) wrote about two decades ago has yet to be realized. Rather, we
have the further bifurcation of women into discrete alliances with marginal issues
that once again become tacked on as afterthoughts to other agendas.
Nonetheless, there are some feminist organizations that have been able to work
across sectors and to continue to focus on and foster feminism. SEWA (Self-
Employed Womens Association) has remained unapologetically feminist and
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28
Feminist Organizations
DISCUSSION
In some ways, engaging in issues that affect women, even those that integrate
areas of difference such as disability, may indeed reinforce difference and cause
further division. It may also perpetuate very dated stereotypes of the caring and
relational women. By railing against the stereotypes laid before usthe nurturing,
caring collaborative co-workerare we saying that we do not want environments in
which these ways of human interaction are not valued? Margrit Eichler (2005) has
noted women do the bulk of the care work, and for many, their learning is closely
intertwined with this reality. We perhaps need to look less at difference and more at
our everyday practices. As feminists and researchers, we will want to avoid portraits
that lead themselves to simplistic portrayals of women in feminist organizations
as feminine and friendly or, worse yet, catty and confrontational. Avoiding such
bifurcations is important as they split us and our organizational and governance
work into categories of male and bureaucratic or female and collectivist. Indeed
more significant is looking at the specific ways in which women are affected by their
difference: how does disability affect women? How does immigration policy affect
women? How are womens daily lives affected? How do feminist organizations
learn from and respond to these challenges?
29